J and I to the Blue Song for dinner. First time this season. We’re early so it’s not full and we have a table looking out over the sea breaking on the rocks. Service always unhurried and always a starter gratis. We both order sheftali [Predictive text has no idea what to make of this and changes it unhelpfully to shelf talk. Difficult to negotiate with predictive text. Did ask Siri (male, Jeeves type accent, unfailingly so polite I find myself apologising for troubling him) if he could prevent algorithms from helping me in ways that I found unhelpful but was told sadly that he was afraid that was beyond his capabilities.]
Șeftali in Turkish or Sheftalia in Greek (yes, do have a Greek keyboard but not sure it would be helpful - read Greek like a very small child, slowly and preferring capitals to script). Sausage native to Cyprus, made with pork in Greek territory and lamb or beef in Turkish areas. Meat is ground and seasoned and wrapped in caul fat rather than sausage casing. Way better than that sounds. I order it whenever possible because it’s unavailable in the rest of the world. Tonight’s is beef rather than lamb - fair enough as lamb has become unreasonably expensive - but also slightly undercooked. Not dangerously but the outside should be crisp, almost charred. So bring home the uneaten half as we’re pretty full anyway and now get to look forward to home crisped şeftali with tomorrow’s dinner.